About the Farm
ALL PHOTOS PICTURED ARE FROM/OF OWC CAMPUS
One World Center prides itself on modeling and teaching sustainable farming methods. There are several growing spaces on our property. Our mission is to grow enough food to support up to 50 people on campus, share our bounty with local food pantries, and teach people how they can grow their own food in many different ways. Our main growing space is our small intensive farm.
There we have many perennial crops such as Asparagus, Berries, Rhubarb, and Sunchokes. Each year we grow about 30-35 different annual vegetable crops here using our fields and our hoop house (passive solar greenhouse). We utilize our hoop house all year which allows us to grow and harvest fresh produce 52 weeks a year without heat. We maximize our growing space here by intercropping, growing vertically, and optimizing successional crops.
Our Kitchen Garden has several raised beds and is our model of how people can use small spaces at their home to grow a lot of food. Our last growing space is the rest of campus where we are converting our 9 acres of grass into permaculture spaces. In 2022 we started 30 fruit tree guilds and we have more plans to expand with a wildflower meadow, windbreaks with native shrubs, rainwater capture, and increasing the biodiversity and wildlife that lives with us on this land.
Farm Photo Album
Meet the Farm Manager
Hello! My name is Joannée and I am the Farm Manager at One World Center. I started here in May 2021 and it has been a joy to start transforming our property to grow more food for the people that live here on campus and for our community. Our hoop house is now being used to grow produce all year and we have created a new Kitchen Garden and permaculture fruit guilds for our orchard.
I got into farming when I helped create a garden for our local emergency food bank. I attended Michigan State’s Organic Farmer Training Program in 2010 and then started my own farm with two business partners in 2011. Our farm was the first certified organic vegetable farm in Brighton, MI and we grew and harvested fresh produce 52 weeks a year. We had a farmer’s market, sold to chefs and groceries stores, did loads of training on growing and cooking food, and had farm to table dinners. I worked with 40 to 60 working share members each week and that community was incredible. We had people ages 2 to 80 years old and they were from all walks of life. It was inspiring to see what we could accomplish and to see how much food we could produce when we worked together. It has created the desire in me to always be part of an organization that is working to make this planet a better place.
We closed our farm in Brighton in 2018 and I worked several other jobs looking for the one that gave me that sense of purpose and joy again. I’m happy to say that One World Center is now part of my life’s journey and I am thrilled to be here.